by Shawn Schepps

When I heard the words, “I can’t find your clitoris,” it occurred to
me that hiring a male escort had been a stupid idea.

I hadn’t slept with anyone in a long time. I hadn’t slept with anyone
I liked for much longer. I wanted to be touched. I was lonely for the
touching. I longed for that delicious, balmy feeling I get in the base
of my stomach when a man strokes me as if I am precious. I had gone
for so long without that feeling, I decided I had to create a
situation for myself with it.

But once I was lying naked on my bed, with my knees spread due East
Silverlake to due west Long Beach, and heard the words, “I can’t find
your clitoris,” I was pretty sure hiring a male escort had been the
wrong way to go.

I hired the callboy because I was starting to feel as if I might be
drying out. I swear I could feel my bones getting so parched the dust
of them was flowing into my bloodstream. I was asking my gynecologist
questions like, “If I don’t have intercourse for a really long time
will it put me into early menopause? Has anyone ever done a study
about that? Could my body shut down in my thirties because I’m not
being lubricated by enough masculine energy and KY?”

He laughed and said no. But I was concerned anyway.

Masturbation isn’t the same thing as actually fucking a man. And women
fuck differently than men; for us, it’s all about what’s inside.
Feeling him inside. Moving while he’s inside. Men can pull out, wash
off and walk away. Sex isn’t so momentary for us — if it’s not the
sperm or the jelly dripping out of us for days, it’s that wonderful
soreness, that sweet tinge of invasion, that hangs on in a delightful
way.

I knew I was going to have to approach this thing like a man if I was
going to get fucked by one. So I did what any self-respecting chap
would do. I bought myself a whore.

I don’t know what I thought. That my experience with him might open up
my heart charka so I could let someone in. That I had been so isolated
and covetous of my own delicate feelings that fucking a guy who was
good at fucking might free me up to fuck some more. That if I could
learn to fuck I could learn to put my head into someone’s lap and fall
asleep there. The last thing I thought was that my prostitute wouldn’t
be able to find my clitoris.

We met at a coffee place. I bought him breakfast. He was quite
arresting: six foot something with clear hazel eyes, full lips, high
cheekbones and fine hands. He was nice to me, which surprised me. I
always find it surprising when great looking men are nice to me. He
wasn’t condescending or skittish at all. He was suave. I don’t know
people who are suave. Everyone I know has some kind of tick. My
prostitute had none of that going on.

I spent my second date with my prostitute buying him lunch, paying for
his valet parking and taking him to a water slide park in San Dimas.
The reason we went to a water slide park in San Dimas was because
after talking to me he decided that I didn’t necessarily need sex
right away, I needed to relax with a man and have fun. Now, I have a
lot of males in my life who I hang with, so I wasn’t sure why I had to
pay for this, but I felt that my prostitute was probably very
experienced when it came to the internal psyche of a woman.

So we went to San Dimas to have us some relaxing fun.

I’d like to say the water park in San Dimas was relaxing fun, but I
can’t. I didn’t feel particularly sexy surrounded by greasy pre-teens
and large public water masses with one-quarter water, one-quarter
chlorine, one-quarter pee and one-quarter mononucleosis in them. I
don’t know where I thought I was going. Aspen? Tahoe? I was in San
Dimas. It was humid and sticky. The place was a freak show. I didn’t
feel sensual or provocative or wanton or any of the things I was
paying my prostitute to help me feel.

I bought my prostitute lunch and we talked. I realized I didn’t like
him very much when he told me he was once a bouncer at some exclusive
club where he and his model buddies would scam the un-hip, un-handsome
and un-laid by making them pay extra to get in.

I blanched when he told me that. What an awful thing to do. Torture
people just because you feel better than they are, hurt people because
your entitlement comes in the form of a red velvet rope. It made me
cringe right there on the artificial sand. I should have taken him off
the clock then.

But I was not there to judge my prostitute.

I was in discovery. I was searching. I was looking for those crazy
orgasms that would rip through my being like a power drill, cracking
the concrete of my heart. I thought if he fucked me well I would be
left with that feeling of subtle renewal, like I was a woman after
all, I was full and lush and deserving of lovers and husbands and all
the things that you think will make you a part of the world.

Orgasms don’t make you a part of the world. And male Euro trash
hookers with great bodies and perfect dicks who can’t find your
clitoris make you feel rather like you have fallen off the world.

When we got back from San Dimas he led me to my bedroom. He lit
candles and put on music. He lay me down and undressed me. He asked me
what I liked. I said I liked to kiss. I do so like to kiss. To feel
the connection of lips, the sighs inside of mouths, the pounding of
hearts, the tentative touching so titillating that lovers often forget
about all the good stuff in between and rip their clothes off to be
within each other. Yes. Yes. I do like to kiss.

My prostitute didn’t kiss. That was his one rule. It was too intimate
for him. Here I was, being really brave, asking for what I wanted in
bed, and right out of the gate, I’m back in the gate.

I lay there and watched him take off his clothes; he took off mine. He
was lean, ascetically beautiful. He murmured something about how soft
my skin was. I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying because I had
already left my body and was hovering above myself as my whore boy
nuzzled my face as if I was a horse, his fingers trying to manipulate
my nipples as if they were treble dials on a car stereo.

I knew I would have to ask him to give me head. I was dry as the
Sahara. He’d never get his cock inside me and that would be so
embarrassing. You know that stuffing-it-in feeling, that awkward,
why-isn’t-this-easier feeling, well-blame-the-girl-with-the-dry-vagina
feeling.

I gathered up all my courage again and said I wanted — I really
liked — you know what was good for me? — it would be great if he
could — oral sex was a good thing.

“Oh,” he said. “You want to give me a blow job?”

“No. I mean, sure. I mean, I like giving blow jobs. I like it. Yeah. I
mean, and I’d even like to get better at it. And maybe we can do that.
Later or, you know, at another juncture, but I was kind of hoping you
would go down on me.”

Silence. Honest-to-God silence. Why? He was my whore boy prostitute. I
was paying him. Why was there silence? We were on the clock. Let’s
make it happen guy. Tick-tick-tick.

“I’m brilliant with my fingers. I drive women crazy,” he said.

Oh shit. This was bad. Guys who say they are good with their fingers
are never good with their fingers. The laws of sex and the laws of
life are the same: if you think you’re brilliant at something, you’re
slacking off, and if you think you suck at it, you might have a chance
to be brilliant.

My male hooker was not good with his fingers.

“I can’t find your clitoris.”

“Uh, it’s there,” I say.

“Yeah, I know, I just can’t find it.”

“I swear it’s there.” I am so embarrassed.

“Is this it?” he asks.

“No, that’s my labia.” I could just die.

“Is this it?” He looks at me hopefully.

“No, not really. Here. Let me help you. Here, a little to the left.
No, up. No, down a little. A little to the right and higher. Higher,
not lower. Can you not feel that? It’s right there. Can you not feel
it?”

My Euro-trash concubine whore boy rooted around in my vagina for a
looooong time. Just dug away, trying to find something familiar. His
flaccid penis lay inactive against my thigh while he burrowed through
my vagina as if he was looking for that Scooby Doo thermos he lost in
the third grade.

I wondered if he’d give me a pap smear while he was down there.

I paid him in cash. I said I’d call him again. I never did. I still
have this horrible fear that I’ll run into him at a party and have to
tell him that he way overcharged me for a guy who never found my
clitoris.

He did leave me with one honey of a hickey, though. That was the best
part about the whole experience, the fact that I was marked. All my
girlfriends thought it was really hot. Strangers thought it was really
hot. I felt, for a time, with that mark on my neck, that maybe I could
find the next man. And maybe he would lead me to the next. And maybe I
would blossom one day and be able to tell my secrets while lying under
covers sticky from sweat and intimacy and truth.

Shawn Schepps is an actress, playwright, screenwriter and fiction
writer. Among her screenwriting credits are "Encino Man" and
"Son-in-Law." She has created several television series and has
written and directed a number of short films, including "Group," which
won the jury prize for best short at the No Dance Film Festival 1998
and the Ohio Film Festival 1999, and "The Closet," which has appeared
at the Slamdance Film Festival 2000, the HBO Comedy of the Arts
Festival 2000 and is currently running on HBO.
Shawn is currently
working on her first novel. "My Prostitute" is her first short story
publication.